A weird thing happened when I was reading this category romance... Oh! And the Jewellery-Mistress-Cliche

....you know, don't you, that sometimes I need to just - read a category? Get my fix, you know? I can handle it, I swear.....

You might not be able to read this cover - it's pretty hazy - the book is Bought for the Sicilian Billionaire's Bed by Sharon Kendrick. An impulse buy at the supermarket a few weeks ago.

I've liked some of Sharon Kendrick's stuff before. I do like my melodrama me, though preferably ladled on with a little bit of finesse and SK meets that requirement rather well. (I remember one particularly good one - some years old now - in which the hero, who was married to the heroine, believed he was terminally ill so set up this elaborate hoax so that she would believe he was having an affair and leave him. All so she wouldn't have her life ruined by looking after him etc. etc. It was fab. But I digress).

The point of posting about this book (a C if you're interested, with a disappointing ending that came to a ppppfffffffffffttttt sort of a finish) is the heroine. She was a little bit - refreshing. In fact, I'm gong to give SK a wee little thumbs up over this heroine.

When the hero tells her he wants her to be his mistress:

'Your mistress?' she echoed. Because in her world men didn't come out and say things like that. 'But you're not even married!' Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.... 'Are you?'

I like that she doesn't go. Right, mistress. Yeah, I get you.

The hero then explains what a mistress is. Usually in the Presents sort of category this involves lots of slimy old-fashioned euphimisms about 'taking care' of the heroine and 'providing' for her 'needs'. But it's dealt with a little more believably here:

..it does away with uncertainty and means we both know where we stand. And where we stand is to have a wonderful affair while accepting that there's no future in it. That's all.

Which made it sound kind of like the kind of stuff real life creeps come away with and thus more readily believable.

Other pleasing things included:

• *tiny spoiler* she is not a virgin and this properly bothers the hero - and he just has to freaking live with it. Ha!;


• when he gives her a diamond bracelet, she doesn't freak out but is uncomfortable. He persuades her to keep it and she feels that she's 'crossed some invisible line and sold out'


• when he takes her to task for her 'betrayal' in selling it (to pay for a carer for her grandmother, natch!) she sticks up for herself (yay!) 'You forced me to take a bracelet I didn't particularly want - presumably because it satisfies some sort of mistress 'code'. I didn't realise it came with certain specifications of what I was or wasn't allowed to do with it! I suppose if you'd given me perfume you would have included a list of times when I was allowed to spray it?'**

**which puts me in mind of what my mother always used to say about present-giving: give a thing; take it back; God will punish you for that.

For a Mills & Boon Modern Romance, Jessica is quite refreshing heroine (although the hero, Salvatore is one of the Heroes I Love to Hate).

I would officially Like To See More of This Sort of Thing (Jessica, not Salvatore) in Categories, thank you very much. I like silly and melodramatic on occasion, but wildly anachronistic is wearing a bit thin. Some tenuous link with reality would be appreciated.

Oh! And while I'm on the diamond bracelet thing, something that DRIVES ME CRAZY (and I only capitalise over stuff that really does irritate me, I assure you) is the jewellery-mistress-cliche i.e. that when a man (or rather, romance hero) gets tired of his mistress, he sends her an expensive piece of jewellery and she *knows* that That's It; it's over.

This came up just today in a book that I am otherwise enjoying very much: The Sins of Lord Easterbrook by Madeline Hunter. Easterbrook despatches a servant to deliver the jewellery to his now-ex-mistress. The man asks if there is to be a note. His answer?

'That necklace is all the explanation that is required.'

You know what? I DON'T BELIEVE THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED.

You know what else? If any man sent any woman an expensive piece of jewellery after he'd been shagging her for a few months, she'd think: Well, he's keen!

If that is not a pure romance myth that has it's roots in some Old Skool romances of long ago, then I will eat those priceless ruby earrings that that Argentinian polo player sent me just last week.

Today I am mostly loving .... harps

Downtime: Tumperkin en famille in the car

This weekend, we drove down to Yorkshire to see the in-laws. Not so much the dry stone walls and dales sort of Yorkshire as the beer and pies sort of Yorkshire.

Went Friday 11am and got there 5pm. Left 11.30am today and got back at 6pm. Felt like we spent a lot of time in the car. Me, Mr T, number one son (6) and number two son (2). Mr T drove the whole way, which suits me just fine.

Driving journeys are this really, aren't they?

I find them ... singular. Whenever we make long car journeys, I'm suddenly aware of how there are just places connected by roads with lots of space in between; that there are places that aren't really places at all; that there are big stretches of nothing very much, punctuated with road signs and service stations run by surly people who live God only knows where.

On the way home today, in an attempt at something rather better for lunch, we went to a 'farm shop and coffee bar'. When we got out the car and could only smell pig shite, we really should have driven away again.

Still, it was a sunny day and they had a big trampoline. Nonetheless, we cut the sarnies short and stopped an hour later at a desperate Moto service station so that Mr T and I could get a shot of caffeine. Him: espresso; me: latte; littleys: ice lollies. First sunny day in ages and we were in the bloody car.

But the weekend itself was great. Early outside birthday party for the big littley thanks to a toasty brazier in the garden. Much wine, whisky and al fresco singing. Also much teasing of sensitive pre-teen nephew and niece. My two year old up ridiculously late both nights. My almost-6 year old wildly rollercoastering between delightful cheekiness and plain annoyingness that was nevertheless charmed away by his utter fabulousness.

On the way there, I spent most of the journey in the back with the kids, making playdoh stuff (playdoh 'meals' that we pretended to eat etc.) and playing a tickling game that annoyed Mr T no end, involving as it did, much shrill screaming. On the way home however, the exhausted little littley slept and the big littley did stuff in an absorbed fashion that was really most impressive. Which left me free to read yet another Kresley Cole book *blushes* (until I started feeling sick, round about when we reached the Scottish Borders) and otherwise - well, pondering stuff and having esoteric conversations with Mr T about how much time one spends during one's lifetime at traffic-lighted pedestrian crossings waiting for a green light when No-one Is Crossing.

Ah, downtime.

Nardi and the Chateau: Reflections on Bliss by Judy Cuevas #2

Y'know, I do not know what is going on with Blogger at the moment. For the last few days it has just not let me put a vid in a post and now it won't even let me put an image in! Well, I prolly don't need one for this post.

In my last post, I said that I would next talk about why Nardi, the hero of Bliss, is like a building, the Chateau d'Aubrignon, to be precise.

The Chateau has been the ancestral home of Nardi's family in the past but when the book opens it is owned by a wealthy industrialist, du Gard. As, funnily enough, is Nardi, having stupidly offered himself to du Gard's daughter in marriage, not realising that by doing so, he has handed his very liberty over.

Nardi is, put bluntly, a bloody disaster. He's an ether addict, completely in thrall to his addiction which has robbed him of any desire for anything else at all. This is really just terribly sad, because otherwise, Nardi is extraordinary. A beautiful, talented disaster.

The flower and the pride of the de Vallier family, the youngest, the prize and the prodigy. And the only family member capable of fighting a musical instrument - and losing.

Nardi is on his way to a premature death. There's a terribly sad and gorgeous bit in the early part of the book (the same scene with the alpaca coat I mentioned in the last post) where Sebastien - travelling home with Nardi in a carriage - sees this very clearly:

... he was... aware of Nardi's inertness across from him, the vacant motion of his body rocking along, as unfettered and unbothered by life as if it were already on its way to the cemetry.

He's not the only one in a bad way. The Chateau is magnificent and decaying and ramshackle. It is ruined. Can anyone save it? Hannah arrives with her employer - an antiques expert - to inventorise its contents. At this point she hasn't even met Nardi:

The grandeur of such ghostly beauty beneath the disrepair was eerie. Hannah found the scope of both - the beauty and the devastation - almost impossible to absorb. Mrs Besom on the other hand, not only could absorb it, she could envision dismantling it, selling it, boxing it and shipping it across an ocean.

Nardi has been boxed up and shipped off, by his worried - and money-dazzled - family. Shipped off to be cured of his addiction before his marriage to du Gard's daughter.

I love the hinted reference in the last quote to people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. I have a sense already that Hannah is going to see more - both in the Chateau and Nardi - than others see. I also like the question that is being delicately posed of how far someone can go before they destroy the very thing that they seek to save.

Clothes maketh the man; reflections on Bliss by Judith Cuevas #1

HOW tiny is this picture? It was the only one I could find of Bliss by Judy Cuevas (aka Judith Ivory) one of my current reads. And it's just oddly random. Butterflies? Perhaps there is a significance I am not yet appreciating. I have only read a few chapters.

Yes, only a few chapters and I am loving this book. I'm finding myself savouring it like a bit of very fine, very dark chocolate. Enjoying its richness and details. But too much to read in one go. Happy to pad it out with other less gorgeous books.

Only a few chapters in and already I am brimming with thoughts about it. So I thought that, for a change, I might share the thoughts as I go along, rather than doing a hindsight review in the normal way.

So first up, I want to talk about clothes. Clothes are always very important in Ivory's books. In Black Silk, Graham Wessit wears up to a dozen watch fobs at a time, a mark of his flashy eccentricity and his exhibitionism, whilst the heroine, Submit, spends most of the book hampered - literally and figuratively - by yards and yards of black mourning silk. And in Untie My Heart, Stuart Aysgarth's flamboyant Russian fur coat is a perfect illustruation of everything that he is - a glorious sort of fabrication of his own making; a self-invented wonder.

In Bliss, I have already had two examples of this. The hero, Nardi, is first encountered out of his mind on ether by his brother and has to be taken home. (When Sebastien first finds him, he is lying in a piano, covered in his own vomit and apologising to the piano for his disgraceful sexual performance.) On the way home, Sebastien reflects on Nardi's coat which is a sumptuous thing of cream-coloured Alpaca. It's such a neat scene. With just a few observations from Sebastien about this exquisite coat, I have fixed in my mind the sense that there is something extraordinary and rare about Nardi and that Sebastien both loves and desperately envies him.

The other wonderful clothes thing, is that the heroine, Hannah, has a flashy, vulgar petticoat that she adores. She is travelling in Europe with her employer, an exacting lady of middle years who is an antiques expert. The petticoat has already become symbolic of the struggle between these two women. The employer wants Hannah to ditch it, and manages at least to make her insecure with worry that she really is vulgar. And yet she remains determinedly attached to this beautiful vulgar thing that she loves. It's so visual and economical; such great story-telling.

Next, I may post about why Nardi is like a building.

The Gandy man can

I'm not exactly up with whatever is 'hip' and 'now', what with my propensity for walking around with my head in the clouds dreaming about men in breeches and top boots. But occasionally, something manages to pierce the clouds.

Those of you who still live in the real world probably don't need me to tell you that this is David Gandy, supermodel. Pretty.

Not really my type, what with the whole beefcake thing he's got going on. At least not historically my type....

Historically, I've always had a thing for the less obviously gorgeous and those sensitive nerdy types.

But, strangely I'm finding that as I get older, I'm really beginning to really just appreciate sheer unadulterated beauty.

And this chap is beautiful, isn't he? I sort of like the fact that he's not precisely ripped. Just, well, yum.

The Observer's Woman magazine put him on their front cover yesterday (ooooh! Spot the inspiration for this post!) under the tagline 'Why Men Are Big This Season'.

The actual article argues that in times of recession, we stop taking risks. So out go slender bohemian types. Instead, we favour the David Gandys; the obviously beautiful and the type of guy who looks like he could hold down a good job. Say, as a billionaire businessman.

As opposed to, say, this guy :

I mean, let's be honest, I'm not sure he'll even be able to carry that bag up a flight of stairs never mind go out and hunt down a mammoth for me.

Um, am I getting ahead of myself?

Which kind of raises a question, given that the David Gandy type has always been 'hip' and 'now' so far as romance readers are concerned.

Do we like alpha males because they're reassuring in an uncertain world? All that 'trust and protect' stuff?

Or is it just that he's bleedin' gorgeous?

Disappointed review with one small bit comfort

I've been meaning to read Castle of the Wolf by Sandra Schwab for ages. I'd read and overall enjoyed her first novel, The Lily Brand. Knowing it was a first novel, I was forgiving about some of the more melodramatic parts and thought it showed promise.

Later, I found out a lot more about Ms Schwab. She is one of the contributors to Teach Me Tonight, she teaches English Literature at the University of Mainz in Germany and she wrote in German before deciding to switch to English, her second language. All of these factors affected the way I viewed this book as I read it.

On the one hand, my expectations were very high. Ms Schwab is teaches romance and literature after all. She knows of what she speaks. On the other hand, I found myself searching almost for excuses for this book. I don't know Ms Schwab, but I wanted to like her book so much I felt it almost interfered with my judgement. I almost decided not to post a review.

I was aware that I had read positive reviews of the book on various sites and couldn't remember seeing a negative one. Could I just be - wrong, I wondered? Unlike me, to worry about something like that.

So let me tell you about the book. Celia Fussell is 27 and single. She's one of those romance heroines whose doting fathers have taught them latin etc. However, the doting father dies and her brother and crass sister-in-law are clearly going treat her like the worst sort of poor relation. Happily, however, the father owned a secret German castle. He bought it when it was 'lost' by his friend Von Wolfenbach. He had always wanted to give it back to his friend but since Celia is single when he dies, he figures he can return the property and provide for her simultaneously by bequeathing it to Celia on condition that she marries the 'von Wolfenbach son'.

Celia hares off to Germany with nary a query into what awaits her there, to find that the occupant of the Castle is a bad-tempered one-legged man called Fenris von Wolfenbach. Fenris is one of the von Wolfenbach sons. The other is Leopold, a handsome seemingly charming blond who soon shows his true colours. Marriage ensues - to Fenris - and various obstacles to the HEA.

I'm minded to list my various complaints about the book in a summary fashion:-

1. I didn't like Celia. I got the sense that she saw herself as a delicate flower who had to force herself to take action and not be passive. But she was deluding herself. She was shrill and overbearing.

2. Fenris is the most self-pitying hero I have ever come across bar none. He spends most of the book stomping around the battlements of the castle in the night and thinking things like He had forgotten what he was... a cripple, a freak, only half a man.... And just when you think it's finished, he starts all over again.

3. Leopold is a panto villain.

4. The language is just wrong. The structure of the prose is ok and there are some very nice passages but the idiom of the dialogue is very very off. Given that the book is set in 1827, the peppering of modern American-English throughout is a constant irritation. At one point, quite seriously, Leopold says "Gee, I'm so happy to see you too, big bro". Gee! Big bro! So so wrong. And this is constant. Perhaps the fact that English is Ms Schwab's second language means that she doesn't recognise how glaring this is?

5. The other language thing that irritated me was Celia's wrong-sounding insults to Fenris ('bugbear', 'bugaboo', 'hoddypoll'). Funnily enough, I'd be inclined to bet that all the terms she uses were in existence by 1827 - if so, still doesn't make them sound 'right'. It was probably part of the general prepondence of fairy tale references which, regrettably, I felt was clumsy and overdone.

6. Overdoing it was a bit of a theme with this book. There was a lot of repetition of ideas and objects. In particular, there is an erotic deck of cards that we never hear the end of. That was something that could have worked really well but it needed a lighter touch that Ms Schwab gave it.

But.

But. There was a point in this book, in about the middle, where it was really quite good for while. It sort of gripped me momentarily. This happened around the lead up to and culminating in the (dear God, finally!) consummation scene. Now, I admit that I do find consummation scenes compelling. And this was a good one. Ms Schwab did something with the scene - created a sort of appalling, humiliating moment for Fenris that just (to coin a phrase) undid me. And I realised that despite everything, in those few chapters, this book was nailing it for me; was Hitting The Mark (whatever the mark is - I haven't really worked that out). I got a shiver or two over it.

So, in conclusion, there was unfortunately more bad than good in this book for me. Overall, it was a disappointing read. And yet, it had a grain of something that made me make a mental note. Possibly an author to revisit.